Comme l’Amérique à ses débuts , l’Artsakh se bat

Across the globe from America, on lands described in the Bible, a Christian people are fighting for survival in a battle that the Founding Fathers of America would instantly recognize as similar to their own.

The Armenians of Artsakh are under siege in their mountainous stronghold known to the outside world as Nagorno Karabakh. The courage shown and the sacrifices made by these ordinary men and women in their struggle for life, preservation of identity, the right to practice their faith, and the determination of their own destiny are the kind that legends are written about. To the people of Artsakh, the words of our Declaration of Independence are as if their own. To them, it should be “self-evident” to the world that the creator has endowed them with “certain inalienable rights” that include “life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness”, and that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, & to institute new government.” This is precisely the path that the Armenians of Artsakh have followed in declaring their independence from the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. They did so under a democratic referendum and according to the laws in force in the former USSR.

These people, whose struggle so well embodies the struggle of our own nation, face an existential immediate and present danger. The women, children, and the old of Stepanakert, the regional capital, spend most of their time in bomb-shelters under bombardment by cluster bombs, missiles, artillery shells, and aerial bombardments by aircraft and kamikaze drones. They will not leave. For their husbands and sons are on the front lines of their besieged mountains fighting one of the most advanced military machines that the despotic Azerbaijani government’s oil money could buy. Having found that military technology, an overwhelming numerical superiority, and money cannot bring this small band of Christians to submission, the Azerbaijanis have brought in extremist Islamic militant mercenaries from Syria to fight at the front lines. These militants are the remnants of Al Qaeda and ISIS, the foresworn enemies of America, and the American way of life.

As Americans, as a people founded on the basis of defiance of oppression and having fought for our own right to determine our own destiny, we need to take a stance, before it is too late, in support of this noble Armenian struggle. Write to your city councils, your mayors, your governors, and congressmen. Write to our president. Demand that the United States recognize the independence of Artsakh.

source : Stepan Partamian

photo : domaine public